Local

This is shaping up to be a banner year for local road improvements.
Lancaster County is getting half of the S.C. Department of Transportation road projects slated for the Catawba region – Lancaster, York, Union and Chester counties.
DOT ranks the projects each year based on feedback from each county, with counties grouped by district.
And yes, a healthy dose of politics usually plays into the decision, said County Administrator Steve Willis.

A year ago, 80 to 90 percent of the cats that came into the Lancaster County Animal Shelter had to be euthanized to make room for the continuous influx of new animals.
In the last quarter of 2017, only 12 percent were put down, thanks to the overwhelming success of the county’s TNR (trap, neuter and return) program.
December’s numbers were especially striking, with only 21 cats euthanized because of lack of space. Cats are sometimes put down for other reasons, such as sickness or injury.

Residents are breathing easy in eight of the nine Indian Land subdivisions that received a county ultimatum two months ago about the deadline for getting their streets accepted into the county maintenance system.
Not so in Reid Pointe, where nearly 80 percent of the streets are in “desperate need of repair,” County Attorney John Weaver said at Monday’s county council meeting.

Lancaster County might join other local governments across the country in suing 24 opioid manufacturers and distributors to hold them accountable for their roles in the national drug crisis.
“It’s epidemic everywhere,” said county council Chairman Steve Harper, noting there were 25 drug-overdose deaths in Lancaster County last year.

Amir and Rashid Ansari, the youngest of four brothers, were inseparable growing up in Michigan. Two years apart, they have always been mistaken for twins.
“You could say we were attached at the hip,” said Rashid Ansari, the younger of the pair. “I was his shadow.”
They both became physicians, moved to South Carolina and worked at Springs Memorial Hospital.

The Indian Land incorporation vote will be held March 27.
News of the special election date came Friday, more than two years after Voters for a Town of Indian Land rolled out its incorporation campaign.
The three Indian Land incorporation election commissioners agreed to have county elections officials organize the vote for Tuesday, March 27, instead of a Saturday, April 7, date considered earlier in the week.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Noble isn’t one to mince words, even with prospective supporters like Cary Kimmel.
Noble and Kimmel had a scrappy exchange Thursday night during the local Democratic Party’s “Our Revolution South Carolina” forum at USC Lancaster.
When discussing where the state falls in the nation’s public-education rankings, Noble forcefully challenged Kimmel’s assertion that South Carolina ranks 35th, and not dead last in the United States as Noble had said.

In 32 years of law-enforcement work, Lancaster Police Chief Scott Grant has attended many officers’ funerals, but never one as moving as Monday’s honoring Detective Mike Doty.
More than 5,000 people came to the slain York County deputy’s service at Charlotte’s Calvary Church. As the 5-mile-long procession moved down I-77 to Rock Hill, Grant saw people not just stopping their cars along the interstate, but getting out and standing at attention, saluting or holding their hands over their hearts.

Lancaster Mayor John Howard began chemotherapy treatments for lung cancer Thursday while continuing to battle pneumonia at Carolinas Medical Center in Pineville.
“He had his first round of chemo and is tolerating it well,” Karon Howard, the mayor’s wife, said by phone. “He’s doing well with the pneumonia and doing breathing treatments for that.”
She said he’s hoarse from those treatments but still talking about City Hall business and fretting about being away from the job.

A Lancaster man has been charged with murder in Tuesday’s fatal shooting of a cashier at Fort Mill’s landmark Peach Stand.
Christopher Benjamin Méndez, 28, of 1701 Pardue St., is accused of killing 19-year-old Karson Bailey Whitesell of Rock Hill.
Maj. Bryan Zachary of the Fort Mill Police Department said investigators served Méndez with warrants Wednesday afternoon for murder and possession of a handgun during the commission of a violent crime.
He is being held at the York County Detention Center without bond on both charges.